Psychometrist: What do they do?

A psychometrist is an important profession within the world of assessment and psychology.  Their primary role is to deliver and interpret assessment.  For example, they might give IQ tests to kids to identify those who qualify as Gifted, then explain the results to parents and teachers.  Obviously, there are many assessments which do not require one-on-one in-person delivery like this; psychometrists are unique in that they are trained on how to deliver these complex types of assessments.  This post will describe more about the role of a psychometrist.

Psychometrist: What do they do?

A psychometrist is someone involved in the use and administration of assessments, and in most cases is working in the field of psychological testing. This is someone who uses tests every day and is familiar with how to administer such tests (especially complex ones like IQ) and interpret their results to provide feedback to individuals. Some have doctoral degrees as a clinical/counseling psychologist and have extensive expertise in that role; for example, the use of an Autism-spectrum screening test to effectively diagnose patients and develop individualized plans.

Consider the following definition from the National Association of Psychometrists:

A psychometrist is responsible for the administration and scoring of psychological and neuropsychological tests under the supervision of a clinical psychologist or clinical neuropsychologist. 

Source: https://www.napnet.org/what

Where do psychometrists work?

The vast majority of psychometrists work in a clinical setting.  One might work in an Autism center.  One might be at a psychiatric hospital.  One might be at a neurological clinic.  Some school psychologists also perform this work, working directly in schools.  In all cases, they are working directly with the examinee (patient, student, etc.).

Psychometrist vs. Related Roles

One misconception that I often see on the internet is the distinction or lack thereof between the words psychometrician, psychologist, and psychometrist.

These all work in the intersecting fields of psychology and assessment, but are actually quite different.  The most flagrant offender, curiously, is Google. Like most companies, we utilize AdWords. Google often treats the words psychometrician and psychometrist as interchangeable, even though the two are nowhere near each other. It also does the same with psychometrics and psychometric testing which are similarly quite distant, but that’s a blog post for another day.

A psychometrist usually works under the direction of a psychologist, though sometimes a psychologist serves as their own psychometrist.  For example, a psychologist at a mental health clinic is in charge of screening patients and treating them, but might have staff to deliver psychological assessments.  But a psychologist in a school might not have staff for that, and also delivers IQ tests to students.

A psychometrician is someone involved with the engineering of assessments. As the subtitle to the book Modern Psychometrics notes, it is the science of psychological assessment, though I take major issue with the “psychological” word because the majority of assessment in the world happens in other areas, such as education, employment, and professional certification/licensure. It’s definitely not limited to psychology, though that is the historical root of the field.  They delve into the fundamental process of the assessment itself, researching things like data analytics and machine learning models that make assessments more efficient and accurate. The most common is item response theory. In the corporate world, they are typically involved in the building and validation of assessments, such as large-scale university admissions or professional certification tests.  They never work directly one-on-one with the examinee/student/patient.

Consider the following definition for the US Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Designs, scores, and analyzes data from exams. Psychometricians’ work ensures that each test is reliable and that all test results are valid.

Source: https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2011/fall/yawhat.pdf

 

For clarification, here is a comparison:

Aspect	Psychometrician	Psychometrist	Psychologist
How are they involved with assessment?	Engineering & validation	Administration & interpretation	Patient treatment
Education	PhD in Psychometrics, Psychology, or Education	Bachelor’s/Master’s in Psychology (often Counseling)	PhD in Psychology (often Counseling or Clinical)
Quantitative skills	Complex analyses like item response theory or factor analysis; complex designs such as adaptive testing	Interpreting scores with summary statistics (mean, standard deviation, z-scores, correlations)	Quantitative research outside of assessment, such as comparing treatment methods
Soft skills	Often a pure data analyst, but some work with expert panels for topics like job analysis or Angoff studies; never with patients or students	Works extensively with patients and students, often in a counseling role, and can be highly trained on those aspects	Works extensively with patients and students, often in a counseling role, and can be highly trained on those aspects
Example	Researcher involved in designing high-stakes exams such as medical certification or university admissions	Staff in a clinic that delivers IQ and other assessments to patients	Supervisory staff in a clinic that treats patients

To draw a metaphorical comparison, if this was an airplane, the psychometrician would be the engineer that designed the plane, the psychologist is the airline that sets schedules and services, and the psychometrist would be the pilot. Obviously all roles are important to effective functioning of the airplane, but the roles are quite different – even though the terms are almost the same in our case!

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